


Christmas Affair

by Neverever



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Established Relationship, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Sugar Daddy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-09-23 05:36:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17074373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverever/pseuds/Neverever
Summary: Tony thinks that Steve will be proposing to him after many years of living together, except that Steve has a secret that could ruin it all.





	Christmas Affair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tonystarkssnipples](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonystarkssnipples/gifts).



> Tonystarkssnipples asked for a fic that had Sugar Daddy!Steve supporting Tony but with a twist. 
> 
> Hope this story is what you were hoping for!

Christmas was for proposals, wasn’t it?

He’d been distracted the past day or two thinking about Steve’s sudden odd behavior. Trying to parse out the hushed phone calls in the hallway, the furtive visits to the condo storage room, and the intense look Steve gave his coffee.

Steve had said something a few months ago about getting married after shacking up for years, making it official, in case something happened to Steve. Tony hadn’t made much of it at the time. He hoped he’d made an affirmative grunt or nod, anything to encourage Steve’s entirely rational train of thought. 

“Earth to Tony?” Pepper asked. 

Would Steve have bought the ring at Tiffany’s? Tony frowned slightly. Steve was a bit more conservative about style and fashion than Tony. He should have sent Steve pictures of appropriate rings, a bit more encouragement. But Steve had been traveling so much lately, he could have bought anywhere and Tony wouldn’t have known.

“Tony?”

Startled, Tony hadn’t even heard Pepper enter his office. “What?”

“Your eighth anniversary dinner?” Pepper asked. 

“Yeah, yeah.” Tony jumped in his seat and swung around to face Pepper. “I want something special, something that says, ‘You’re the best and I love you and my life would be a wasteland without you’ but in a dinner-at-a-restaurant kind of way.” Tony leant back and twirled around in his chair. “Steve isn’t particularly into a whole big show.”

“I’ll come up with a list of places and what you can afford,” Pepper replied. 

“A steakhouse somewhere -- Steve likes his steak. And it’s on me -- Steve doesn’t have to pay for everything.”

“Right. Will he be back from his trip in time?”

“He promised. He never breaks his promises.”

“I’ll send you suggestions.”

Tony’s little biotech start-up had come into its own in the past year with an influx of awards and accolades and all the positive media coverage his heart could desire. They were on the verge of a couple of major breakthroughs for pacemakers and assistive devices. Stark Industries was going to revolutionize the world.

He could finally pay for a fabulous dinner and a night out on the town for his boyfriend after all the years that Steve supported him unquestioningly with love, kisses, and a ton of money.

“When is Steve back?” asked Dani, the rainbow-haired social media staffer, when he stopped by her cubicle to thank her for the recent publicity.

“Any day now,” Tony said.

“Got to lock him down, Tony. He’s a keeper,” she replied with a laugh.

Everyone at Tony’s company knew about Steve, the light of Tony’s life and his constantly traveling boyfriend. Tony had exactly one photo of Steve at work, and Steve had been universally declared as very hot. The guy was unusually reluctant to have his picture taken, saying he didn’t look good in photos.Tony didn’t understand, since Steve was gorgeous in person or in a photo and was objectively a very attractive man. Tony preferred the bedheaded, fucked-out version of Steve, but that was not an option for a workplace family picture.

Besides, he liked keeping Steve as his own personal guilty pleasure. He was open about his relationship at work. What he wasn’t open about was how he met Steve. Or that Steve was the real money behind Tony’s fledgling start-up.

Later, when Tony settled down at his desk for another night of work, he looked over the framed photo of Steve and him taken on vacation the year before. 

His phone buzzed.

 _-Don’t stay up too late-_

Tony smiled at Steve’s text. Even if Steve was in Panama or Costa Rica or somewhere else, he still worried about Tony’s poor sleeping habits.

_-Love you. Be home soon.-_

Yeah, he was so lucky to have Steve in his life.

~~~~~

It wasn’t that Tony actively lied about how he met Steve, he just conveniently left out most of the details. Yes, they met at a bar, that’s true. Yes, they started dating sometime after that. Yes, he had been living with Steve for a few perfectly blissful years now. 

What Tony failed to mention was that Steve rescued him from a fairly painful and miserable episode of trying to skip out on a large bar bill. Well, large for Tony at the time, as he’d been cut off by his parents three months earlier because of Tony’s “everything.” Since then, Tony had been maintaining the polite fiction that he was still a trust-fund kid with trust-fund money. College costs were paid for through his graduate program. But he was scrounging for food at catered events and couch-surfing at his friend Rhodey’s. 

Taking out twenty of his then-closest friends for a bar night was a terrible decision. But one very much necessary for his personal ego. Except at 2 am when he had to settle up a $5,000 bar tab with nothing to save him. So Tony, desperate and wobbly from drinking, had attempted to flee when the bouncer blocked him at the door. Flailing about for a safety line, he tried his bag of tired excuses on the stony-faced bouncer, who was buying none of it.

Then Steve appeared out of nowhere. Like an old-timey knight on a white horse with a Black Amex. “My bill, Jake,” he said in that wonderful, deep voice that made Tony a touch weak in the knees.

“Are you sure, Cap?” Jake the Bouncer asked, his eyes shifting back and forth between Steve and Tony.

Steve clapped a large hand on Tony’s shoulder. “We need to call it a night. 40% tip -- and anything else you need to cover for any problems.”

“Sure thing.”

Steve summoned a car for Tony. “Where are you going?”

Tony only shuffled his feet, flustered and not sure what to say for once in his life. He couldn’t go to Rhodey’s so late when Rhodey’s girlfriend was over. Tony’s plan was to pick up someone and stay there. 

“No place to go?” Steve asked gently. 

“You know -- I --”

“You can come with me. I have a guest room.”

The virtual Rhodey who lived in the back of his head shrieked at him about going anywhere late at night with a stranger who could be an axe murderer. But who had just paid off the bar bill with a generous tip, Tony added. Will that matter when they’re picking your body parts out of the Charles? Imaginary Rhodey pointed out.

Then he took a good look at his rescuer and his gorgeous, kind blue eyes. “Fine,” he said, hoping he’d made the right decision.

“I’m Steve Rogers,” Steve said as he held the door open for Tony.

“Tony Stark.”

Oh, yes, Tony had made the right decision. Steve showed him the nicely appointed guest room in the corporate condo he was staying in, left Tony with aspirin, a glass of water and a trash can, and bid him good night. And didn’t even ask Tony to do anything creepy or weird. Although Tony might be have been willing, given how much the bar tab had been.

When he woke up in his own room in a wonderfully comfortable bed that wasn’t the couch in Rhodey’s living room, Tony felt ashamed at what he would have been willing to do if he could just stay there for one day.

Steve made it worse because he’d made breakfast, and Tony could smell the coffee as he struggled to get out of bed. Steve knocked on the door. “Okay if I open the door a crack?” he asked.

“Okay,” Tony replied in a sleep-blurred voice. 

Steve stuck a pair of overly large sweatpants and a t-shirt through the crack, the perfect clothes for a person who wasn’t sure if they could work the zipper on a pair of jeans, even if they wanted to. Tony had had a rough night, a few rough months, and a rough year, and suddenly it was all collapsing on him in this stranger’s condo.

Tony managed to get to the kitchen and the promise of coffee and even more coffee. They ate, and Tony had never had better pancakes or bacon. Better than that, Steve asked him no questions. As he cleared the breakfast dishes, waving off Tony’s offer of help, Steve said, “You can stay here for as long as you like, Tony. You look like you could use the break.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I have to get back to the lab.” He might have been tempted to stay if the place had a computer.

Steve had a brilliant smile, the sort of smile that made Tony feel a little weak in the knees and his stomach do a flip. Even if Steve was clearly older than Tony. Tony was almost, but not quite 21 -- though his top-notch, best-money-could-buy fake ID said that he was 23. Steve was maybe in his early 30s, Tony wasn’t sure. He wasn’t the best judge of people or their ages.

“I could send for anything you need and set you up in the office over there.” Steve pointed out the small room off to the side. “I have meetings for most of the day. Then we could have dinner.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Tony ran through a list of what he’d need. Coffee, power, internet, peace and quiet, and dinner at the end of the day were seriously tempting.

“No strings, if you’re worried about that.”

Tony nearly spit out his coffee. Not that the thought that Steve would expect something in return hadn’t crossed his mind. But it sounded crass coming out in Steve’s gentle, deep voice.

“I’ve had hard times before. So I understand.”

“Yeah.” Tony stared at his cup of coffee. He swallowed. “I could use a day or two in one place,” he admitted. “With good coffee.”

Steve clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you my number in case you need it.”

Maybe that’s when Tony fell for Steve. Steve turned out be ex-Special Ops and he owned a security consulting firm. He was, in fact, in his early 30s, about ten years older than Tony, and was wealthy. Very wealthy, from Tony’s expert assessment, having grown up around money. But Steve was sweet and kind and supportive. He didn’t ask for anything from Tony but Tony willingly gave.

He stayed that day, then another day, and within a month, he was spending weekends down in New York City with Steve, falling naturally into a relationship. When he finished his Ph.D. the next year, the day after graduation he moved in with him. Steve was perfect and good and the rock in Tony’s chaotic life.

Another thing that Tony left out of his life story -- that it was Steve who primarily bankrolled Tony’s biotech start-up. Tony claimed that he used up what little was left of his trust fund money to fund the start-up and private equity firms provided the rest of the backing. But it was Steve, all Steve. He believed in Tony and was willing to put his money where his mouth was.

Tony only told people that Steve was his boyfriend. Maybe that was for the best, really. They didn’t need to know that Steve was there for him in his darkest days, when he had the barest concepts of some ideas about building a next-generation biotech company, when Steve insisted on giving Tony the money to make his dreams come true.

“Why, Steve? You don’t have to do any of this.”

Steve hugged him close. “I like to see you smile, isn’t that enough?”

It was, most days. 

~~~~~

When Tony got home, evidence that Steve had come home early filled the condo. The sensible shoes by the door, the suitcase neatly stowed in a corner of the living room, a pile of magazines on the kitchen bar, the sound of the shower being turned off. Tony breathed in deep, feeling that sudden peace he got when Steve was home.

He barely let Steve have a chance to dry off when he launched himself into Steve’s arms, kissing him voraciously. 

Steve smiled down at Tony in his arms. “Glad to see me?”

“You have no idea how empty that bed feels when it’s just me in it.”

“That’s assuming you actually slept when I was away.”

“Research and development waits for no person,” Tony claimed. “We can order in if you want or go out somewhere.”

Steve sighed deeply. He put his forehead on Tony’s. “We should go out -- otherwise, we’ll both fall asleep on the couch with food on our laps.”

“You make that sound bad. I’ll go make reservations.”

Tony should have insisted that they eat in, since Steve barely said anything except to order dinner. Anything more than was like pulling teeth. He did manage to grunt at the right spots in Tony’s stories, but, uncharacteristically, he had his phone out. Steve never did that. And, worse, he checked the phone whenever it buzzed.

Tony sighed at the last interruption. “We could go back to the condo if you need to check in at work.”

Steve shook his head tightly. “No, no, I’m fine.”

“I don’t think you are --”

Then a guy “accidentally” bumped into Steve. Tony rolled his eyes as the guy apologized to Steve, brushing imaginary crumbs off Steve’s shirt. This happened way too many times when they went out. Just like bees to honey.

“You’re welcome,” Steve replied in a chilly tone. “My boyfriend and I are fine.”

That and Steve’s glare usually made people step back. This guy instead gave a long, appraising look at Tony. And then gave Steve a questioning glance. Steve managed to dial up the Death Glare a couple of notches, sending the jerk packing.

“You know, this wouldn’t happen if we had rings or something,” Tony suggested as he fished for more definitive proof of a forthcoming proposal.

But Steve’s phone buzzed again. While Steve texted, Tony asked for a dessert menu. “Uh, Tony, we should call it a night.”

“Why? You like the cheesecake here.”

“We need to go now.”

“Are you okay? Seriously, Steve.”

Steve pulled out a few bills from his money clip and tossed the money down on the table. “Come on.”

Back at the condo, Tony suggested, “Want to watch a movie?”

Steve didn’t respond -- again he was glued to his phone. Tony feel a sudden unease. Steve rarely, if ever, used his phone at home and teased Tony for his constant texting. But there he was, standing in the middle of the kitchen with a frown on his face. 

“Steve?”

“What?”

“Movie?”

Steve shook his head. “I -- I don’t think so. I have work.” He walked past Tony, only stopping to kiss Tony on the top of his head. “Don’t stay up too late.”

~~~~~

Tony had never worried about his relationship with Steve before. He had a rock-solid confidence in Steve. Despite the money and the security work and the constant travel, Steve was a creature of habit and the most reliable person Tony had ever known. And Tony had built his life so completely around Steve that he was at a loss now that Steve didn’t go to bed at 10:30 on the dot or make the coffee when he got up and headed out for his morning workout.

Remote and distant, Steve spent two days holed up in his home office. This time it was Tony hovering around the door pushing food on Steve and reminding him about bedtime. In return, Steve was brusque, kept the door shut with a sharp warning to Tony about entering the room, and was, in all, outstandingly grumpy.

Until Steve announced that he had to take a overnight trip somewhere. And this time he didn’t tell Tony where he was going, unlike whenever he’d taken a trip before.

Tony watched an angry Steve moving around their bedroom throwing clothes into a suitcase. Pulling on all the love he’d had for Steve over the past several years, Tony ventured a question. “Is everything okay? Is the business okay? We can live through anything. Steve, talk to me.”

Steve stopped, holding a shirt in his hand, and swallowed. “Please, Tony, trust me on this.” He shoved the shirt into the suitcase and zipped it closed. “I love you, just remember that. I’ll fill in you in when I can.”

“Want me to take you to the airport?”

“No, I have a car picking me up. Don’t wait up for me tomorrow.”

Once Steve was gone, Tony felt lost in their condo. What if Steve didn’t come back? It had been three days of a Steve Tony had never seen before. He sunk further down into the couch, unable to read or code or pay the slightest bit of attention to the television. 

Was this the end or the beginning of the end? Nosy people had warned him for years that he shouldn’t get invested in Steve, because Steve would leave him in the end. 

“Rhodey, I love him more than life and I’m losing him, I know it,” Tony blurted to a confused Rhodey on the side of the phone.

“Wait -- it’s way early where I am -- give me a minute,” Rhodey replied. Then Tony heard some crashing and Rhodey shutting the door. “Okay, I’m back. Last week you thought Steve was going to propose.”

“Right.”

“Now you think he’s going to leave you?”

“He’s been so strange and he won’t tell me anything. Won’t talk to me -- I know he hasn’t been sleeping .. and he’s not even gone to the gym and you know he loves weight-lifting --”

“Tony, Tony, Tones. Calm down. You’ve known Steve for over eight years.”

“Not like this!”

“Take a deep breath. Good. Has Steve said anything about his company, the security one?”

Tony racked his brain. “I know he has friends there, Natasha and someone named Sam. He goes out for beer and pizza with Sam, they argue about basketball ... “ They’d been in the military with Steve, he thought, but wouldn’t bet his life on it.

“Tony, I know more about Steve’s company than you do, and you live with the man. He has an operation that runs highly classified operations for the government and interested parties. I only know that because I’ve seen reports. Steve never breathed a word.”

Rhodey always stayed at their place when he was in town on leave from the Air Force or on business. Steve liked him. 

“So, relax as best you can. The only way Steve is going to leave you is if he dies. He’s probably has some mess going on at work and he can’t tell you.”

Tony’s chest unclenched finally. The idea of losing Steve …. was awful. But Rhodey made sense. “Thanks,” he said with every ounce of gratitude in his body.

“What does your gut tell you?”

“Steve loves me.”

“Stick with that. Now that you got that out of your system, you would not believe what happened on base yesterday.”

Peace was fleeting though. Steve didn’t text like he did when he was on a trip. Or call or anything. Now Tony had a whole other thing to fret over. Would anyone call to tell him if Steve was killed on the job? He’d never thought about that before. But Rhodey telling him about Steve’s company opened a whole new dimension of worry for Tony.

He resorted to coding. Bug fixing had a way of calming his nerves. And he did have that major presentation to investors in a day. He should work on that.

Steve didn’t text or call until he returned home way after Tony had fallen asleep on Steve’s side of the bed, holding his pillow that still smelled of Steve. Tony briefly woke up when Steve slid into bed. He kissed Tony. “Go back to sleep.”

Tony curled into Steve, who pulled him close. Just a normal little thing, like it had always been before. Tony tried to put it all out of his mind, feeling secure with Steve’s arms around him.

~~~~~

Tony had to wake up before the crack of dawn for an early meeting. Some East Coast head of a venture capital firm was throwing his weight around, demanding to meet Tony on his terms and at his time for the investment call. Tony would have infinitely preferred to stay in bed to drink up Steve’s warmth. Plus Steve would bring him coffee in bed that way.

He was halfway out the door when he remembered he forgot his phone.

Barely held together by coffee and dressed in an uncomfortable suit, Tony crept back into the bedroom and grabbed the first phone his hand could find in the darkness. He snuck out, hoping he hadn’t woken the World’s Greatest Light Sleeper. 

Turns out it wasn’t his phone. It was Steve’s. More precisely, it was Steve’s secret phone. The one that he didn’t think Tony knew about. Tony had found out about it and promptly forgot about it because Steve used it for work. And Steve really didn’t want Tony to know about what he did for work, as Rhodey reminded him.

He looked at the string of coded texts.

Well, he knew that Steve wasn’t cheating on him. People blatantly hit on Steve in front of Tony all the time, and Tony had long ago found that Steve only had eyes for him. 

He and his team aced the VC meeting. After a quick celebratory slice of pizza in the break room, Tony headed back to the mystery waiting in his office. Decoding the texts took a bit of his time. A nice little challenge, but even after the decode, he didn’t have a clue what the texts meant. 

The phone rang. “Rogers,” someone barked. “Is that job done yet?” Tony couldn’t impersonate Steve at all. The person growled, “Take out that target tomorrow. Or else.” Then the mystery barker hung up.

Tony puzzled over the phone in his hand. Maybe one reason, beside the super secret spy stuff, that Steve didn’t talk about work was that he had to work with jerks like this. What the hell was Steve up to?

Steve ran through his office door. “Do you have my phone --?” He stopped when he saw the phone in Tony’s hand. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought I left it somewhere.”

Tony handed the phone over. “Are things okay, Steve?”

Steve was fiddling agitatedly with the phone. “Usually I’d praise you for being brilliant, Tony, but I wish you hadn’t broken into the phone.” He gave Tony an indecipherable look.

“Steve, you didn’t answer my question.”

“It’s okay, Tony.”

The phone buzzed again in Steve’s hands.

“You’re not going to break up with me?”

“What!? Wait.” Steve listened to the phone all the while walking back to Tony. 

“Tell me how I can fix this. I can’t lose you.” Tony didn’t see the red dots of light dancing on his office wall and zeroing in on his head.

Steve dropped the phone and lunged at him, yanking him down and rolling them both under the table. “Tony, we’ll talk later. No, we’re not breaking up. I need to get you out of here.”

“What?”

Bullets shattered the office window and hit the wall behind the desk. Tony froze in Steve’s protective arms. 

“I’m getting you out of here now.”

Steve hustled Tony out of the office while Tony frantically tried to call Pepper to clear his calendar for the rest of the day. They walked out the building, took a sharp turn around the edge of the building and straight into a waiting car.

“Steve?” the driver asked.

“Sam -- take us to the Red Hook house. We’re going to be followed.”

“Natasha’s on it. She’s luring them away.” Sam peeled out into Manhattan traffic. 

Tony’s stomach sank. Now that the shock wore off, he realized that someone had tried to kill him. And Steve saved his life. Steve clutched Tony’s waist tightly, like Tony would evaporate into thin air if Steve let go. 

“What in hell is going on, Steve?” he demanded.

“Someone has a hit out on your life. We’re going to a safe house. That’s Sam, by the way. My boyfriend Tony, Sam.”

“Nice to finally meet you, Tony. Steve talks a lot about you.”

“Uh, you too.”

Sam must have been a New York cab driver in a previous life the way he wove in and out of traffic. They were making pretty good progress, considering the afternoon city traffic of bumper-to-bumper cars and buses and trucks. Whoever this Natasha was -- she was doing excellent work. She kept sending the occasional update as Sam fought the traffic and Steve held onto Tony for dear life. Tony might have appreciated it more, but Steve’s gun was poking him in the thigh.

“Hope to meet you in different circumstances,” Sam said to Tony when they pulled up to a nondescript office building on a nondescript street in Brooklyn.

Tony couldn’t begin to fathom why they were there. He shook Sam’s hand. “Hope to see you, too.”

Sam winked. “I’ve got some fun stories to tell you about Steve.”

“Sam,” Steve warned.

“Another time then.”

Pulling Tony behind him, Steve headed to the second floor of the office building and an office suite labeled “Northstar Associates.” Tony stepped through the door, not knowing what to expect. It was a safe house full of supplies and guns and a nice framed picture of Tony on a table. The suite was undecorated, with beige walls and a few pieces of furniture in a style best described as “chain hotel rejects.”

Tony sat down on the ugly beige couch while Steve locked the door, shoved a chair under the handle, and closed all the blinds. He moved efficiently and precisely through the suite, checking equipment and setting out a couple of guns. He made a few phone calls to Natasha and someone called Bucky. Finished, he sat down next to Tony and opened a briefcase on the glass coffee table. 

“Steve, what’s all this about?” 

Steve sorted through folders in the briefcase. “Someone took a hit out on you. I don’t know who yet. Bucky and Natasha are working on that.”

“Nice picture.” Tony pointed at the framed photo.

Steve smiled for the first time in days. “That’s one of my favorite pictures of you.”

“There’s a story here.”

“Yes. But we have to get you to the airport.”

“No.”

Steve started handing things to Tony from the briefcase -- a fake passport, a fake ID, a burner phone, and an airplane ticket to Brazil. He pointed to the phone. “I’ve loaded information on a bank account with money to cover your living expenses for a couple of years.”

“I was expecting a more traditional proposal involving a ring.”

Then Steve seemed to collapse in on himself. He took Tony’s face in trembling hands. “You’re brilliant and you’re the future. What you’ve done with your business and all your inventions, it’s amazing, Tony. You’re going to win a Nobel prize or something one day. You’re one of the most important people in the world right now. I’ve been happy to be there every step of the way.”

Tony shuddered. “Well, we’re back to the breaking-up conversation. It’s a bit novel -- with the death threat and the white-knuckle drive through the city and the safe house. You could have gone with the typical restaurant setting instead.”

Steve rested his forehead on Tony’s. “All that matters is that you are alive somewhere where you can keep doing what you’re doing. I’ll take the heat -- I would have loved nothing more than to get married to you. But the people behind this hit are persistent, and I’ve got to do everything I can to save you.”

“I feel like I’m in a very bad movie,” Tony replied, drawing back out of Steve’s hold. “What the fuck are you saying, Steve? It’s like you’re going to take a bullet for me or something.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Your plane is leaving soon -- Bucky will be here to pick you up.”

Tony frowned. “Stop that. I’m not helpless, Steve. I’m not leaving you behind.”

“You won’t like the truth.”

“I thought you were going to propose to me. Y’know, not the whole-save-me-from-getting-assassinated thing. So you owe me an explanation.”

Steve drew a sharp breath. He got up and paced around the room. “I was going to propose at New Year’s. Take you up to the Empire State Building -- no matter how cheesy that is -- and ask.”

Tony smiled ruefully. “I love that idea. We can still do that -- New Year’s is only two weeks away.”

Steve squared his shoulders and gave Tony an uncompromising look. “You’re going to Brazil.”

“No, I’m not. And you haven’t explained a single damn thing since the office.”

Steve’s phone rang. “I have to get this, Tony. Sit still and stay away from the windows.” Steve pointed to a room off to the side. “There’s some computer stuff in that room. There’s no internet though.”

“Fine,” Tony grumped. “At least I’ve got something to play with.”

Well, Steve wasn’t wrong about the computer equipment in the room. Tony found neatly organized laptops, a server, some tools, a desk and a desk lamp. Steve rushed in and gave him a list of passwords and then rushed out again. Tony shrugged and got to work. Working on computers was the best way to calm his nerves and soothe his rising anger. While he loved Steve, he was pissed at the non-answers Steve had given him since the minute he showed up in Tony’s office.

Sitting there at the desk, he could hear Steve’s extensive phone conversations. Steve was orchestrating some kind of big operation to stop the assassination attempt. He couldn’t recognize all of the people Steve talked to. Some guy named Fury seemed to be the linchpin to Steve’s plans. Finally, whatever Steve was working on wrapped up. 

Ducking his head through the door, Steve said apologetically, “I’ll make dinner. It will be out of cans.”

“I’m fine with soup.” Tony had been disassembling a laptop and whatever other equipment he could lay his hands to make a weapons system for the safehouse. 

“What do you think?” he asked Steve. He showed Steve what he had devised.

“You’re unbelievable, Tony.” 

Tony’s heart eased at seeing the naked admiration on Steve’s face. The world he knew and everything about Steve had shifted all around, but Steve hadn’t changed one bit. “I try. My father was a weapons manufacturer, you know -- I know my way around guns.” 

While Steve heated up canned soup for dinner in a microwave in a kitchenette on the other side of the room, Tony rigged up his system, taking time to precisely aim the guns. He stepped back to admire his work and noticed that Steve was setting a table with dishes and napkins and cans of soda. Tony appreciated his attempts to make the dinner vaguely romantic. 

But he really wanted answers and he didn’t like how Steve was avoiding the questions. Brazil was not the answer to everything.

“What’s going on?” Tony demanded. “Why do you have a ton of specialized scopes and all these assassin-type guns? I know my guns, Steve.” He sat down at the table and the soup Steve had heated up.

“That’s because I occasionally work as an assassin and I store my guns here,” Steve admitted. 

Tony’s mouth fell open. “Excuse me?” 

“When I left the Army, SHIELD contacted me about working for them. I had a specific skill set that they needed. I wasn’t interested -- Natasha, Sam and I were planning on our own security consulting firm. SHIELD told me that if I didn’t play ball with them, they would make sure I never worked again anywhere.” Steve sighed. He looked forlornly at his bowl of cooling soup. “I do the occasional black-bag job for them, and now my consulting business is thriving from the referrals.”

“Black-bag job?”

“Assassinations. Fury sends me the information and I do the job. Just about all of the targets are very bad people who could do a lot of harm. I’m very good at it.”

Tony listened, even though the whole story seemed so preposterous he could barely wrap his head around it. Steve Rogers, Assassin. Steve was an honest person, though, and Tony couldn’t find a reason not to believe him.

“Assassinations.”

“It’s not a big part of my business. Less than ten percent, and I’ve never used that money to fund your company.”

“Right.”

“I’m not happy with my actions, Tony, this isn’t what I wanted to do with my life.” Steve shook his head. “Tony, I love you and need you to be safe.”

“Yeah, about this assassination attempt --”

“Not related to my business. We can still get you safely to Brazil.”

“It would have been helpful had you filled me in on all your jobs. Y’know, before we all had to run for our lives,” Tony snapped.

Steve wrung his hands. “I couldn’t lose you. If you knew the truth, would you have stayed?”

Tony tried, but he couldn’t stay angry with Steve, even after all this. He sighed. “I don’t know what I would have done if I knew earlier. But I can’t lose you -- even if I don’t like what you’re doing.”

“I don’t either.”

“Right now, though, I’m not going to Brazil. We’re going to solve this. Tell me what happened — you found out about this hit and decided to save my life?”

Steve fell silent as he thought long and hard. “I didn’t find out -- I was the one assigned to kill you. Somewhere out there you have an enemy with deep connections in SHIELD. You’ve made them scared.”

Tony dropped his head into his hands. That was the perfect topping for today’s shit sandwich. Honestly, it would have been more surprising if Steve hadn’t gotten the assignment to kill him. That’s how bad the day had gone.

“That’s why I’ve been so busy -- my friends and I have been trying to get to the root of this problem. Only Fury can call off the hit. He’s off the grid and I found out this morning they assigned someone else to the hit. They’re relentless, Tony -- I wanted to get you somewhere safe in case ….”

Tony racked his mind for any possible enemies. He hadn’t talked to his parents in ages, but he had heard his father had brought on a new partner named Obadiah Stane. Who promptly tried to sue Tony into the ground. Then there was Justin Hammer, but he was a weapons guy while Tony was in bio-tech. Killian and AIM?

Steve reached for Tony’s hand. “I promise you’ll get out of here alive.”

“Don’t say ‘over my dead body,’ Steve. I want you to get out of this alive too. And then we’re going to have to talk about this assassin thing.”

“It’s going to be a long night.”

“You can start making it up to me by reheating my soup.”

~~~~~

The problem with being in the safe house was the boredom — and the sudden bursts of panic at odd noises and lights from the parking lot outside. Steve spent his time busily fielding calls and texts from his friends about tracking and stopping the assassins. Tony was amused despite himself as he listened in on Steve pushing firmly and strongly to talk to Fury. 

Though Tony was exhausted from hearing Steve apologizing to him for it all. 

“Stop,” Tony ordered. “I’m not angry. You saved my life. But this does mean trash duty for a long, long time.”

While Steve held down the fort talking on the phone and sitting around with a handy gun, Tony researched all his possible enemies. He kept circling back to Stane. Stane had planned to take the old Stark Enterprises in a bio-tech direction, though Tony’s own Stark Industries was dominating the market at the moment. 

Steve had spent the past hour in a chair across from the front door of the suite. Tony walked over to rub his shoulders. It couldn’t be comfortable sitting like that.

“So, you really were going to ask me to marry you,” he said.

“I had it all planned. I can’t believe you hadn’t found where I hid the ring yet,” Steve replied with a ghost of a smile. “But I understand now if you don’t --”

“Trash duty, Steve, trash duty. I’m not going to talk about it -- I want the surprise.”

“I have to start all over again.”

He kissed Steve. “You’re doing great. I think Obadiah Stane has to be behind this.”

Steve reached for his phone. “Fury is going to be so angry -- you know that Stane has been nominated for a Homeland Security position. No wonder SHIELD got the request -- they branded you as a person of interest involved in possible terrorist activities.”

“I’d love to see that -- I could frame the request for my office and hang it next to my honorary degrees.”

“It’s not an award, Tony.” Steve shuddered under Tony’s massaging hands.

“When can we go home?”

“When we’ve stopped this. Brazil looking better yet?”

“I’m going to get some sleep,” Tony said, ignoring Steve’s question and yawning instead. 

As he drifted off to sleep, he heard Steve talking to someone. He thought it might be Fury. Tony turned over, hoping that Steve was right about the call. He really couldn’t stay here for much longer, especially with these scratchy sheets.

~~~~~

Fury had called off the hit. 

That’s what Steve told him in the morning when Tony stumbled out of the back room, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. Steve was obnoxiously cheerful for a morning after a long night spent hiding out from assassins. He was sitting at the table reading something on his phone with a box of donuts nearby.

“We can go home when Sam calls with the all-clear,” Steve said. “Fury is arresting Stane any hour now. He’ll make sure Stane doesn’t make another attempt on your life.”

Tony groaned and went over to the coffeemaker next to the microwave. He was annoyed it was one of those one-shot coffee machines. He needed a whole pot. “I can’t stay here all day.”

Steve smiled at him. “I’ve been thinking, Tony. I should get out of this business.”

“You have to or we can’t stay together, Steve. I love you to bits, but the assassin thing is way more than creepy.” Tony turned around and leaned on the counter, holding his black coffee in his hand. “By the way, I’m not staying at this hotel again -- the sheets and coffee are terrible and living-in-fear-of-our-lives ambience didn’t help the stay any.”

Steve snorted. “I mean the whole security business, not only the other thing. If I sell the business to my friends, that means we won’t have the income we’ve been used to. I’d hate it if your business suffered.”

“You don’t have to worry about a thing. Stark Industries is thriving. Let me take care of you now.” He set down his coffee and threw his arms around Steve. “Honey, I love you with or without money.” 

“I love you too,” Steve said with a bright smile.

Tony kissed him. “We’ll make it work. You can do what you really want now.”

Steve sat pondering for a long time, thinking. “I got a studio art degree in college, along with the ROTC stuff. I’d like to go back to that.”

“I like that idea -- I can be the wealthy patron supporting a struggling artist.”

“You expecting me to pay you back?” Steve smirked.

Tony gave him a mock-stern look. “Well, Mister, if you don’t propose -- you’ll have to pay something back.”

“I promise,” Steve said with a laugh, and gave Tony a kiss to back it up.


End file.
